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Date: |
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Description: | C.R.W. NEVINSON.
image: Doctors and medical orderlies are treating injured soldiers in an open building with straw on the floor. One
patient, stripped to the waist, is sitting up on a stretcher while a doctor inspects a loosely dressed wound to his head. Next to him a
body lies on a stretcher the face covered in bandages. Behind, a patient is crouching on all fours with his trousers round his ankles,
while a doctor inspects a wound in his lower back. Two other French soldiers stand by with arms in slings.
The setting is the 'Shambles' (an old vernacular English term for a slaughter-house), a covered goods yard outside
Dunkirk where wounded soldiers were treated. They were deposited here on arrival from the Front before medical facilities were properly
organised to cope with the enormous flood of injured men. Nevinson's first job as a volunteer with the Red Cross was to tend to the dying
men. In his autobiography, 'Paint and Prejudice', Nevinson describes his work at the 'Shambles': 'Our doctors took charge, and in five
minutes I was nurse, water-carrier, stretcher-bearer, driver, and interpreter. Gradually the shed was cleansed, disinfected and made
habitable, and by working all night we managed to dress most of the patients' wounds.'
Doctors and medical orderlies hastily treat the injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital. The setting is the
'Shambles', a goods yard outside Dunkirk, where Nevinson worked as a Red Cross volunteer tending to wounded soldiers. He described the
scene in his autobiography, Paint and Prejudice: 'Our doctors took charge, and in five minutes I was nurse, water-carrier, stretcher-
bearer, driver, and interpreter. Gradually the shed was cleansed, disinfected and made inhabitable, and by working all night we managed to
dress most of the patient's wounds.'
Optimised
Master | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | French Army Western Front 1914-1918 Military Personnel wounded / disabled French Army 1914-1918 medical / convalescence French Red Cross Western Front First World War military suffering | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Nevinson, C R W | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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